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Book Reviews

afternoon bullfights in the countries to the south. Now we have be-come just as violent and just as sanguine, and just as commercial.It all reminds me of Shirley Jackson's story The Lottery, in whichthe peaceful villagers hold a lottery once a year in which the winneris put to death. This satisfies their blood lust for the nonce, and backthey go to being peaceful villagers and farmers for another year. Pro-fessional football is the closest means we have, legally, to joining thelynch mob, and I am afraid that I am irrevocably a part of that mob.All that aside, we have in this book is a solid, fascinating, and evenprofound analysis of a Texas success story of the 196o's. Like goodcoaches the authors have concentrated on the fundamentals and as aresult have produced a winner.University of Texas, Austin JOE B. FRANTZGowpokes, Nesters, & So Forth. By Judge Orland L. Sims. (Austin:The Encino Press, 1970. Pp. xii + 297. $8.50.)In his preface, Judge Sims quotes J. Frank Dobie who, confrontedby a new book on cowboys, exclaimed, "My Gawd, not another one."Unfortunately, Dobie's outrage has been no deterrent to continuedpublication of equine debris. The judge's acknowledgment of Dobie'simplied injunction does not acquit him of guilt. In the section -de-voted to "Cowpokes" he has contributed nothing new and has monot-onously rehashed every saddle-worn bit of lore. My Calvinistic ethicdoes not construe admitted awareness of sin as a license to commit it.If anything can exonerate Judge Sims, it is the fact that the title ofhis book is misleading. He includes very little about "cowpokes" andeven less about "nesters." The book should have been called r SoForth. It is almost entirely composed of rambling, anecdotal triviaabout sheep-shearers, truckers, railroaders, oil men, bankers, politi-cians, sawbones, and parsons, narrated, according to Barry Scobee'sforeword, "in Orland Sims' very own, individualistic, purely 'Orland-ish' lively and picturesque style." On this level, the book is alsodisappointing.Sims is a university graduate simulating the style of a yokel. Thesalty phrases and bucolic bigotries intruded as folkish "asides" do notcome through. Not only do they ring false, but they are irritatinglyhackneyed and one-dimensional. Trite expressions, repeated over andover, make a sensitive reader wince. The ghastly "westernisms" are